1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and a method for displaying images of merchandise items to prospective customers in sequence and more particularly to such an apparatus and method which employ artificial intelligence to customize the presentation to most effectively address the prospective customer's interests.
2. Background Information
It is becoming common today for merchandisers to utilize video systems to generate consumer interest in their products. The typical system displays images of a number of items in a fixed sequence. Some systems allow the user to select a particular group of items for review. For instance, the user may be offered the option of viewing any one of several styles of furniture. However, even in these systems the menu of selections available is fixed and the group of products selected is always presented in the same sequence. One of these known fixed menu systems will provide specifications if more detail about an item is requested, and will check a main frame computer memory to determine if a product is available, but again the order of presentation of items is fixed.
One system in use allows the user to indicate what features of a given product are most important and then selects items for presentation based on those features. For instance, if a user is interested in television sets and indicates a particular interest in 13 inch color sets, with remote control and selling for less than a given price, the system will attempt to find items meeting those specifications for display. If none are found, the least important features are successively dropped, without the knowledge of the user, until a match is found. Again, however, the sequence in which items meeting the selected specifications are presented to the consumer is always the same.
As the number of items in the system and their diversity increase, it is possible to discourage users who have particular interests, by making them view the fixed sequence of items, many of which have little appeal to them, before items are presented which may be of interest. It would be desirable therefore to be able to identify the type of person using the system in order to present first items which will most likely appeal to that type of person. However, it has been found that if persons are asked directly for information about themselves which would be helpful in determining what type of products would appeal to them, such as age, income bracket et cetera, the results are often not very reliable.
It has been determined that certain types of persons tend to shop at certain times. However, the trends are not so well defined that a rigid system can be reliably based upon them.
It is therefore, the primary object of the present invention to provide apparatus and a method for displaying items to the users of video merchandising systems which adapts to the pattern in which different types of persons shop.
It is also an important object of the invention to provide such an apparatus and method which induce such shopping patterns from the responses of users without directly asking them for the desired information.